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Cenozoic eastward growth of the Tibetan Plateau controlled by tearing of the Indian slab

Nature Geoscience volume 17, pages 255–263 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Formation of the Tibetan Plateau is generally ascribed to the Cenozoic India–Asia collision. However, the origin of along-strike deformation of the Indian mantle lithosphere, especially beneath the eastern Tibetan Plateau region, and its effect on the plateau’s eastward growth remain unclear. Here, we conduct multiscale seismic tomography to provide a revised structure of the Indian mantle lithosphere beneath the eastern Tibetan Plateau region. Our results demonstrate that the Indian mantle lithosphere is currently torn vertically along ~26° N, with its northern portion shallowly subducting northeastwards and the southern portion steeply subducting eastwards into the mantle transition zone. Analysis of tectonic and magmatic records is consistent with advancing and retreating migration of the slab tear after about 50 Myr ago. We suggest that the rigid Yangtze cratonic lithosphere tore the intruding cratonic Indian mantle lithosphere approximately 35 Myr ago, resulting in diverging shallow subduction. The subsequent Miocene rollback of the southeastern Indian mantle lithosphere is proposed to induce a giant turbo-engine-like flow that caused clockwise rotation of the plateau crust and underlying mantle around the eastern syntaxis, leading to differential eastward growth of the Tibetan Plateau.

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Fig. 1: Tectonic setting and P-velocity image of the eastern TP.
Fig. 2: P-wave structure below the eastern TP.
Fig. 3: Three-dimensional view of high-Vp anomalies (>0.8%) at a depth range of 100–400 km below the eastern TP.
Fig. 4: Variations in ages and geochemical data of the Cenozoic magmatic rocks in eastern TP.
Fig. 5: Proposed Cenozoic TP evolution due to differential IML subduction.
Fig. 6: Numerical simulation of two contrasting geodynamic scenarios.

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Data availability

The mantle velocity model and geochemistry data generated and assembled for the study are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10427925.

Code availability

The seismic tomography software package used in this study is available upon request. The geodynamic code is publically available at https://geodynamics.org.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the National Key R&D Project of China (2022YFF0800903) to Z.H., R.W., T.Y., N.Y. and Q.W., the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42230101 to H.Z., 42222304 and 42073038 to B.X., and 92355302 to L.L.), the 111 project (B18048) to R.W., and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WK2080000) to H.Z. We are grateful to L. Chang for the help on assembling the SKS data and M. An for the help on estimating the mantle temperature.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sinoprobe Lab, Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Beijing, China

    Zengqian Hou & Tiannan Yang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Lithospheric Evolution, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Lijun Liu

  3. Department of Earth Science & Environmental Change, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Lijun Liu & Yanchong Li

  4. School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Haijiang Zhang, Lei Gao & Shoucheng Han

  5. CAS Center for Excellence in Comparative Planetology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Haijiang Zhang

  6. State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China

    Bo Xu, Rui Wang, Yuanchuan Zheng & Zhuang Miao

  7. School of Electrical Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Qingfei Wang & Nian Yu

  8. SinoProbe Center, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences and China Geological Survey, Beijing, China

    Lei Gao & Qingtian Lü

  9. State Key Laboratory for Mineral Deposits Research, School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Xiaolei Wang

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Contributions

Z.H. designed and initiated the research, interpreted the data and wrote the first draft of the paper. L.L. and H.Z. conducted respective geodynamic and seismic tomography analysis, interpreted the data and rewrote most of the paper. B.X. synthesized and analysed geochemical data. Y.L. performed the geodynamic modelling. All of the authors contributed to the lithospheric imaging, tectonic and geochemical analysis.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zengqian Hou, Lijun Liu or Haijiang Zhang.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Alexander Koptev, Xiaohui Yuan and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Alireza Bahadori, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 The distribution of earthquakes used in this study.

The color legends represent event depths. (a) Distribution of seismic events used for the CDSN catalog. (b) Distribution of seismic events used for the ISC-EHB catalog. Plate boundaries are marked by the blue solid lines with triangles and black solid lines depict the boundaries between major tectonic blocks. Abbreviations: OB: Ordos basin, NCB: North China Block, QL-DB: Qinling Dabie fold system, SCB: Sichuan basin, JGB: Junggar basin, TSFS: Tienshan fold system, QDB: Qaidam basin, SPGZ: Songpan Ganzi block. Background topography (GTOPO30) from ref. 57.

Extended Data Fig. 2 The distribution of stations, event depths and travel times used in this study.

(a) The distribution of stations. The blue triangles are ISC-EHB stations (http://www.isc.ac.uk/isc-ehb/) and the light blue triangles are CDSN stations (http://data.earthquake.cn). (b) The histogram of the event depths. (c) Travel time curves.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Recovered checkerboard patterns for Vp at different depths.

(a) 80 km, (b) 160 km, (c) 260 km, (d) 360 km, (e) 460 km, (f) 560 km, (g) 660 km, (h) 760 km, (i) 900 km.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Recovered checkerboard patterns for Vp along different latitudes.

(a) Latitude 22°, (b) latitude 24°, (c) latitude 26°, (d) latitude 28°, (e) latitude 30°, (f) latitude 32°, (g) latitude 34°, (h) latitude 36°.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Recovered checkerboard Vp/Vs models along different profiles.

(a) AA’, (b) BB’, (c) CC’ and (d) DD’ used from joint inversion.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Vp/Vs images of the lithosphere in the eastern TP.

a–d show variation in Vp/Vs and possible magma sources along the four profiles shown in Fig. 1a. Bounded by around 26°N, the northern crust is thick (60km) and hot with a lower-crustal partial melting zone (a), while the southern crust is thin (35km) and relatively cool with limited local melting, but the underlying lithospheric mantle is hot, likely with partial melting (b). Both profile B and D show variable crustal thickness and hot lithosphere with focused melting at the lower crust and the uppermost mantle. Black line in each profile denotes the Moho interface76.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Total alkalis vs. SiO2 diagram for the Cenozoic magmatic rocks.

(a) Discrimination diagram of intrusive rocks. (b) Discrimination diagram of volcanic rocks.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Geochemical data of the Cenozoic magmatic rocks.

(a) εNd vs. 87Sr/86Sr diagram. εNd = ([143Nd/144Ndsample] / [143Nd/144NdCHUR] – 1) × 10000. MORB and EM fields are after ref. 77, and Maguan lava are from ref. 78 and references therein. (c, e) Variations of Nb/U and Th/La of magmatic rocks against latitude. (b, d, f, g) Variations of Cr, Nb/U, Th/La, and Mg# of magmatic rocks against longitude. Data set can be found in Supplementary Table 1.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Three additional tomographic profiles through eastern TP.

(a) Topography and profile locations. (b) Profile I, (c) profile II, and (d) profile III. These vertical cross sections cover the region from north to south of the 26°N magmatic field, with seismicity overplotted on the seismic image. The dashed magenta lines outline the subducting slabs that still connect with the surface plate. IML – Indian mantle lithosphere, GY – Greater India.

Extended Data Fig. 10 Calculated lateral mantle flow at 500 km depth.

The results are from a recent high-resolution geodynamic model that simulates subduction since 200 Ma using data assimilation48. The colored arrows represent horizontal mantle velocity at 30, 20, and 10 Ma, respectively. The flow that affected the southern IML slab is that within the dotted black box where the westward flow component strengthened after 30 Ma.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–8.

Supplementary Table 1

Whole-rock major and trace element and Sr–Nd isotopic compositions of Cenozoic igneous rocks in the eastern TP.

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Hou, Z., Liu, L., Zhang, H. et al. Cenozoic eastward growth of the Tibetan Plateau controlled by tearing of the Indian slab. Nat. Geosci. 17, 255–263 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01382-9

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